Ah, Abercrombie and Fitch. An experience in itself as you decide to drop a couple stacks on a few shirts and ripped up jeans.
You take steps towards the large double doors where you are greeted by a half-naked man with facial bone structures like Johnny Depp and abs like David Beckham. You think you must be dreaming as he flashes you a smile and says hello. Then your dream quickly turns to a nightmare. Horrible club-like dance music blares over the store and floods your ears, causing an instant migraine. It’s so dimly lit inside that you can barely see how ugly and ill-fitting the clothes really are as you flip through the labeled up t-shirts. Yet the final straw that finishes off this hellish event comes in the form of perfume and cologne; sprayed every five seconds, you can smell Abercrombie and Fitch all the way from the parking structure.
Not only does this perfume or cologne over power your nasal cavity, but it’s now proven to be toxic for your health. That’s right, all you teeny-boppers, the signature A and F perfume, “Fierce”, ordered by the company to be sprayed inside and outside the store regularly, has been revealed by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics to have 11 secret chemicals that are not listed on the label. The report by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics reported eight sensitizing chemicals that can set off allergic reactions such as headaches, wheezing, asthma, and contact dermatitis. Also discovered were high levels of hormone-disrupting chemical that may harm male reproductive health.
It seems interesting that the reason women, and men, for that matter, wear perfume or cologne is to appeal to the other sex; not ruin their reproduction system and cause them to hack and wheeze every time they get close to you.
You would think that having 11 secret chemicals that set off serious allergic reactions would be illegal to sell, but Abercrombie and many other branded perfumes and colognes have found a loophole in the federal law that allows companies to claim fragrances as trade secrets, according to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics.
As much as I am anti-Abercrombie, they aren’t the worst offender when it comes to fragrances with toxic secret chemicals, with the winner being American Eagle’s Seventy Seven for having 24 secret toxic ingredients. In second is a veteran to the fragrance game—Coco Chanel with 18 ingredients, and third, Britney Spears’s Curious with 17. Among these are Giorgio Armani’s Acqua di Gio, Calvin Klein’s Eternity for both men and women, and Old Spice’s After Hours Body Spray.
However, what makes Abercrombie and Fitch the worst offender of the secret ingredient loophole is their relentless spraying of the this fiercely toxic perfume inside and outside of the store, burning every customer’s lungs whether they have allergies or not.